


Tony Has Arc Issues

by YatoJaeger



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Gen, I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping, little fluffy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-08
Updated: 2013-05-08
Packaged: 2017-12-10 20:09:45
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,076
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/789671
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/YatoJaeger/pseuds/YatoJaeger
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He can't sleep with the light. Steve can't sleep without it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tony Has Arc Issues

“Tony, what are you doing up this late?” Steve asked, voice laced with sleep, stifling a yawn. The lights were out and the workshop void of electronic life, so it was obvious Tony hadn’t been working. The dim blue glow from the arc filtered out from behind one of Tony’s cars, and Steve padded towards it, bare feet soaking up the coldness from the stone floor. He pushed a hand through his hair as he rounded the bonnet, shifting it out of his sleepy eyes as he took in the slumped form of his boyfriend.

“I fucking hate this,” Tony hissed into his hands, head down, knees up, curled in on himself so only the faintest light shone out. Steve sank down beside him, their shoulders pressed close together, his knees tucked up like Tony’s.

“What do you hate?” Steve tried to keep the worry out of his voice, tried to keep it light. Tony would freak and close up on him if he acted anxious and concerned. He wrapped an arm around Tony’s shoulders, pulled him against him. Tony moved with it but didn’t uncurl.

“The stupid arc,” he said, and Steve could tell his teeth were gritted. “I can’t turn it off.”

“Oh Tony,” he sighed as Tony’s shoulders lifted in a silent sob. “Why would you want to?”

“The light just won’t—it won’t—fuck Steve I can’t make it stop,” Tony whimpered, and finally he unraveled himself and buried his face in Steve’s neck, wrapped an arm around Steve’s broad chest. They sat like that for a while, not talking, not moving, just Steve and Tony with the glow from the arc bathing them and shifting ever so slightly as Tony’s shoulders heaved with his ragged breathing. They had done this before, sat with their arms around each other, hugged close late at night because either or both of them couldn’t sleep. This was the first time Steve had woken to find Tony gone, the bed empty and cold. He had gone looking for him, found the workshop door ajar but almost missed the glow of the arc, the telltale torchlight that told him where Tony was.

“You want to tell me what’s going through that head of yours?” Steve asked, running his fingers through Tony’s mused hair. Tony shook his head, still pressed into the side of Steve’s neck. “Can I guess?” No response. “Okay, Tony. The light’s bothering you again, isn’t it? And…I know you don’t like it sometimes because you can’t sleep with it there constantly. But Tony, why are you down here?”

Tony pulled away from him, and Steve felt the cold wash over him in his absence. “Thought if I could clear my head I could think up a way to—to turn it off,” he admitted, staring straight ahead but seeing something else entirely. “Just a cover or…something to block it all out.”

“At two in the morning?” Steve raised an eyebrow. He would never figure out how Tony could work at such odd hours. “You should come back to bed,” he whispered, reached out to take Tony’s hand. Tony laced their fingers absentmindedly, and that was something, Steve supposed.

“I can’t sleep with this light on.” Tony’s voice was low and empty and cold and Steve gave his hand a squeeze because that tone of voice damn near broke his heart. How could such an impossibly brilliant man sound like that? “But, ya know, I always thought the light kinda stood for Iron Man. A “fuck you” to the guys who’ve tried to kill me over the years. But now it just keeps me the fuck awake at night and I don’t even know how to interpret _that._ Jesus, Steve. I’m a mess.”

Tony smiled up at the super soldier, and it was his brave little five-years-old-again smile that told Steve the man he loved was falling apart inside, all his wiring coming loose and the screws working their way out of place.

“Anything I can do to help?” Steve murmured, kissing the top of Tony’s head and hugging his shoulders tightly. Tony wouldn’t say he melted into the familial embrace exactly, but it was a close thing.

“You could make me those pancakes with the cinnamon and ginger?” Tony suggested, voice hopeful and muffled and painfully vulnerable, like he didn’t quite know how he would take being let down. Steve smiled against the brown mess of hair and lifted them both up. Tony kept a hand over the arc, the light creeping its way between his fingers as they walked through the workshop and up to the dimly lit kitchen. There he sat at the island whilst Steve fished around in baggy sweatpants and a shirt that was a little too tight for him (probably one of Tony’s, and he liked the idea of that) for the ingredients needed to make pancakes.

The sight of Steve in that shirt, showing of the line and cut of his shoulders and the arrow of his hips should’ve easily preoccupied Tony, but the playboy barely even noticed him; looking but not seeing. He kept his hands on the arc, blocking the light, massaging the heated skin around it the ring of metal. Over the past few months he had been trying to ignore the weight of it, but since the New York Fiasco, it had just been getting heavier and heavier. A literal weight on his chest, pinning him down, ever there, the light on the edge of his vision.

“Tony.” Steve’s voice (and he tried not to hear the worry in it) snapped him back to reality. “Tony, are you in there?”

“Yep, uh huh, sorry. Right here. What were you saying?” Tony shook his head, trying to push all thoughts of the Chitauri and the wormhole away, focus on Steve.

“Your pancakes are done.” Tony glanced down at the counter top in front of him and hey, whadaya know: pancakes. Tony wasn’t very hungry anymore. He picked up the fork and prodded at his 2 am snack, but made no move to eat.

“Tony,” Steve said softly, pulling up a stool and perching next to him, not quite touching but close enough for Tony to feel the heat of his presence. “Are you going to talk to me?”

There was a pause, broken by the sound of the coffee machine waking up. Steve watched Tony intently, his eyes tracing the lines of his face, the tired set of his brows, the stubble on his jaw that was so unlike the billionaire. Steve was worried. Where Tony was concerned, he was _always_ worried, but more so than lately. Dreams had started to resurface. Bad memories. The Chitauri, and then a few months later the return of Loki, had brought up old nightmares, reopened ancient wounds, and Steve could do nothing for him but tell him it would be alright.

They spent an hour talking there in the kitchen whilst Tony’s pancakes grew cold, and Steve listened about the latest nightmare.

“It’s always the same, ya know?” Tony sighed, rubbing his eyes with the base of his palm. “Starts off that I’m in the suit, flying back to the mansion. I get close enough so I can see it and you’re in the backyard with Clint. You’re sparring or whatever. Not important. Anyway, you look up and I come in to land and as soon as my feet hit the ground, **_bam._** I’m getting sucked on down into it and it’s all water and everything goes black. That’s when I usually resurface and the portal is open over New York again and Loki’s got you by the throat and I can’t get the suit out of the water in time to go save you. But this time I was trapped underwater and it was starting to freeze and I could see this body on the bottom of the bay and I just…I started swimming, ya know, seemed the right thing to do. Huh. Only thing is, it was my dad down there in the dark and he had an arc reactor and his eyes were glowing and he opened his mouth – I dunno if he was gonna say something or what – but then it was like an arc blast and I was rocketing back up to the surface and yea. It’s like when I hit the surface I was falling back out of that wormhole and I couldn’t get the suit to respond.” Tony laughed and it had a hysterical edge to it.

“Woke up on impact,” he murmured and slumped his head forward onto his arms.

Steve rubbed his back in circles, absentmindedly. “You saw your dad,” he said, purposefully not making it a question.

“Yea.” Tony turned his head to the side so he could look at Steve, who tried to hide the worried frown on his brow. “Old man looked like he was built like one of my suits. Scary shit right there.” This time, he managed a laugh that was more tired than hysterical. Steve’s fingers drew patterns across the small of his back, then back up to his shoulders, finding the saw spots and easing the pain. And that’s what Steve did; he eased whatever pain Tony was feeling.

“Come back to bed, Tony,” Steve suggested gently, trailing his hand down to rest at the strip of bare skin between the smaller man’s shirt and boxers. Tony didn’t respond, so Steve tried again. “We can figure out a way to block out the light tomorrow, when we’ve had some rest, okay?”

“But I can’t sleep with it shining, Steve,” Tony whispered, and there was true terror and misery in his deep brown eyes, enough to make Steve instinctively wrap his arms around, his chest pressed up against Tony’s back, head forward to fit against Tony’s shoulder.

“How am I gonna sleep with it glowing like that?”

“Tony, listen to me. Tomorrow we can figure out a way to make this work, but right now I need you to come back to bed with me. You say you can’t sleep with the light of arc but…well, I can’t get to sleep without it.”

“What?” Tony turned the stool so they were facing, but Steve didn’t drop his arms, didn’t want to let go of him completely. The glow from Tony’s chest hit his eyes and turned them impossibly bluer.

“That,” Steve tapped the front of it. “That little light of yours is the one thing guaranteed to help me get to sleep. I can’t shut my eyes if I can’t see it glowing.” Steve shrugged, rubbed the back of his neck as Tony stared at him incredulously. “I—it means that you’re safe. It means that _I’m_ safe. It means I can sleep.”

“Are you saying I’m like your little Iron Man nightlight?” Tony raised an eyebrow and Steve huffed a laugh, relieved that he was up to humour.

“Yes, Tony Stark, that is _exactly_ what I’m saying. Now can you please stop worrying about something we can fix easily in the morning and come up to  bed with me?”

“I would love to. Honest I would, but…” Tony bit his bottom lip, glancing away from Steve and into the shadows in the corner of the room. His attention was pulled back by the weight of Steve pressing in between his legs, placing his hands over the arc reactor and his lips against Tony’s forehead. “Uh, Steve, what?”

“Look,” Steve said, and so Tony did. He looked down at the arc and the hands covering it, and he couldn’t see the light shining through at all.

“Huh.”

“Exactly. Problem temporarily solved. Can we go back to bed now, please?” Steve took Tony by the hand and pulled him to his feet, and Tony followed. He felt the warmth of Steve’s palm against his and he could still feel the weight of love in Steve’s kiss, and for the first time in many weeks, he knew that he would be able to sleep peacefully tonight. Because Steve loved him and Steve loved the arc and Steve needed to know that it was there so he could sleep, and so long as Tony had Steve to keep a hold of the light for him, the nightmares would stay away.

The last thought Tony had that night before he closed his eyes to blissful darkness was that he hadn’t eaten those pancakes.

 

 


End file.
